Feedback on single-family house floor plan 200 m² city villa with hipped roof

Hello everyone,

I am currently intensively planning our single-family house of the city villa type with construction starting next spring/summer. To avoid becoming blind to the planning—if that hasn’t already happened—I would really appreciate your opinion on the current status and one or two suggestions. I have attached the floor plan with a visualization and would like to thank you in advance for your feedback!

Development Plan/Restrictions

- Size of the plot: 660 m²
- Slope: No
- Site coverage ratio / Floor space ratio: 0.35 / 0.7
- Building envelope, building line and boundary: See plan
- Edge development: Possible (border garage)
- Number of parking spaces: Min. 2
- Number of floors: Max. 2
- Roof shape: 0 – 45°
- Style: No specification
- Orientation: No specification
- Maximum heights/limits: 7 m
- Other requirements: None

Client Requirements

- Style, roof shape, building type: City villa with hipped roof (18°)
- Basement, floors: No basement, two full floors
- Number of persons, age: 2 (33/30)
- Space requirement on ground floor, upper floor: Approx. 100 m²
- Office: Family use or home office? Family use and partly home office, hence the size...
- Overnight guests per year: 1 - 4
- Open or closed architecture: Open
- Conservative or modern construction: Modern
- Open kitchen, cooking island: Open kitchen, cooking or half cooking island
- Number of dining seats: 2 - 6
- Fireplace: Yes
- Music/stereo wall: No
- Balcony, roof terrace: No
- Garage, carport: Double garage
- Utility garden, greenhouse: No

House Design

- Who designed it: Own design
- What do you especially like? Why? See below
- What do you not like? Why? See below
- Price estimate according to architect/planner: €415k without land
- Preferred heating technology: Heat pump with ventilation system

If you had to give up, which details/extensions

- Could you do without: Various room sizes / arrangements...
- Could not do without: Actually almost matches the list “what I like”

Why did the design turn out as it is now?

Personal taste (city villa, open construction), plot specifications (orientation and positioning, other external tips e.g. provide for cupboards...)

What I like:

[*]Position of all rooms in general on the plot: bedroom away from the street to the east (sunrise); living area set back from the street, study with large window facing west (sunset side)
[*]Continuous view from entrance area to the garden
[*]House design from the outside
[*]Garage roof with storage space for garbage bins near the street
[*]Integration of the kitchen row and tall kitchen cabinets in the floor plan
[*]Extra room on the ground floor for guests, utility and due to size also possibility as a complete bedroom on ground floor level later
[*]Garage access from inside via entrance area (“dirty area” vs. “clean area”)
[*]Central integration of fireplace
[*]Preplanned integration of household cupboards in niches on ground and upper floors (space under stairs shall also be accessible)
[*]Access to laundry chute from both dressing and bathroom
[*]Bright and open, large corridor on upper floor with window
[*]Central access position of the staircase...

What I don’t like so much:

[*]Offset of dining table to cooking island due to passage width to fireplace; is “okay” but requires walking around... Table directly opposite would be nicer.
[*]The bathroom is okay for me overall, but I don’t like the door position and the corner, even if the corner won’t be very visible because the door probably won’t open to 90° and the passageway is actually wide enough... But I wouldn’t know where to “steal” space from without worsening the position of the stairs or chimney and thus the otherwise good room/passage dimensions in the entrance area, living room, dressing room or bedroom...
[*]“Tunnel” effect in the door area of children’s room 1

What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan summarized in 130 characters?

For now, I’m interested in your assessment/feedback on the floor plan; I look forward to constructive points/suggestions or ideas that maybe I don’t see due to my “planning blindness” and also feedback on the points I don’t like...

Spontaneously, I find the floor plan quite successful! Child 2 is a bit small, but if the office has to be for 2 people, then I suppose you can't swap? I don't find the tunnel at Child 1's room impractical at all... then the door doesn't take up any space in the room and the child still has a second to quickly put the phone aside before the mother can look around the corner and see that chatting/playing was still going on instead of sleeping.

Overall a good approach. Here is what I would work on: EG: - The entrance area is too narrow for my taste in relation to the overall appearance of this stately villa. I would probably pull the front door with a bay window outward instead of moving it inward. - The arrangement of the sofa / living area seems to me to be the wrong way around. I would expect a corner sofa along the wall to the garage / house technology. Accordingly, a TV system opposite it, which allows windows in the southeast corner. - Relatively many dead unused corners (kitchen and fireplace) - or are these supposed to be wall cabinets? OG: Seems to me not mature. - Children's room next to the master bedroom is bad. A study as a separation in between would be desirable. - Child 2 seems quite small. - Entrance to Child 1 doesn’t win any prizes. - Bathroom door in this corner is an annoying eyesore. - Walk-in closet without a window is, in my opinion, a planning mistake. - Toilet directly next to the washbasin in this luxury villa is a shame. - Ideally, you should be able to enter the walk-in closet without having to go through the bedroom again so that the partner can continue sleeping. The chimney still has some leeway - possibly this could be improved at the top. Also the question of how important the closet in the upstairs hallway is. Otherwise, hats off for a quite successful own plan.

Hello Yosan and Kaho, thank you already for the good suggestions! Great feedback! Here are a few responses to that:

- True, the arrangement of the TV area would actually fit better the other way around. Initially, it was because I planned with an existing U-shaped sofa and I don’t want the fireplace to scorch my sofa.. I am also planning to move the TV connection to the opposite side to be flexible there.

- A bit is actually lost in the unused corners. But shelves are supposed to be recessed there (marked with the X..). The air space behind is gone, that’s true. I just measured, it’s 2x about 0.5 m² and honestly that hurt me more before I measured it than now..

- I can very well understand your [OG] points, this is where I find it hardest to optimize. As for the sizes - Child 1 currently has 17.7 and Child 2 15.0 m² and the study has 18 m². Regarding the position, the wall between the master bedroom and Child 1 is made of soundproofing sand-lime brick if that’s what you mean... Theoretically, the study and Child 1 could also be swapped..

- The windowless dressing room was even deliberately designed that way to accommodate maximum wardrobe size using the U-layout. A window could be placed opposite the entrance door but here I thought the necessary lighting from above would be sufficient and preferred more wardrobe space..

- I actually initially had a passage door from the dressing room into the bathroom to avoid going back through the hallway into the bedroom. I discarded that because of the laundry chute that now sits there, problematic sound insulation to the bathroom (in this case sliding door..) and also the fact that the bed is anyway actually offset around the corner.

- I hadn’t even noticed the toilet yet.. what exactly bothers you about it or what would you do with the toilet?

- Exactly at the bathroom door and the entrance to Child 1 I reach my limits..

- You mean the built-in closet in the hallway [OG]? Well, that is actually very important to me as extra storage for this and that, whether suitcases, bedding, winter stuff.. How would you improve the chimney situation? It is currently 40 x 60, maybe 40 x 40 is enough here, I have no idea yet. Above the chimney is the laundry chute, I don’t know if you recognize it as such, maybe that’s a bit confusing.

I also think it is well done. There are small details that bother some, but not others... actually too insignificant to be mentioned. I like the view of the house. At first, I was a bit bothered by the position of the two windows to the left of the front door; mediation would be difficult here. The question is whether the elongated one in the bathroom is somewhat misplanned. A window above the tub also has more disadvantages than advantages, etc. You use a lot of floor space for the house, so some things can of course develop very well. The rest usually becomes somewhat larger (you can see it here with the free middle space). However, you have thereby placed the staircase as a barrier in your house: the entrance appears so cut off that it becomes uncomfortable just to look at the winding corridor. Between the hall and the living area: are those two steps? Or what is that? I find the corridor somewhat problematic when you have visitors or want to enter the house together as a family. Inviting is something else.

On the whole, I quite like the design – all the more I find it a pity that the otherwise clear language of form of the gable above the study gets completely slammed in the face :-(